Thursday, November 1, 2012

Throwing tortillas is a thing, apparently, and other observations from the Giants Victory Parade/Civic Center Clusterfuck/Speechifying Boreathon

[NOTE: This will probably be the last post about baseball for a while. Like until next year, probably.]

Every two years, thousands of people gather in San Francisco and especially in Civic Center Plaza to watch a parade, blow off work, drink Jagermeister, smoke a ton of weed, and celebrate a World Series victory by the San Francisco Giants, who are rapidly becoming the New York Yankees of the '10s.

The 2010 parade, which I also covered, was notable for the fact that it was 81 degrees out and it was also the first time the Giants had won the World Series since they moved to San Francisco when The Ed Sullivan Show was still on the air. This year was considerably colder and also seemed a little drunker, for some reason.

We were all worried about this guy, who climbed up on top of a 5 or 6-story building and stood there at the edge. One strong breeze and the cleaning crew would have been wiping this guy off the pavement instead of just confetti.

Anyway, the parade had all the usual stuff with the cars and the Cal Marching Band and whatnot. The big story, I guess, was Sergio Romo and his t-shirt that said "I Just Look Illegal," which got more attentionthan anything else, pretty much.

When Romo came by where we were perched, fans along the sidewalk started throwing tortillas at him. Romo seemed to get the joke, and ran around grabbing the tortillas up and throwing them back into the crowd. He looked like he was having a total fucking blast.

I didn't really get why someone would think ahead to bring tortillas to a Giants Victory Parade for the purpose of throwing them at Sergio Romo. Or maybe somebody just happened to have a package of tortillas, and thought, "What the fuck, I'll throw these at the guy wearing the provocative shirt about illegal immigration." There were so many possible levels of irony and cultural coding that I needed an Ethnic Studies major to explain them all to me.

Huh. I did not know that. I remember seeing flyers all around town for Incredibly Strange Wrestling, which was a thing in the 90's here in SF and which Bob Calhoun has written a book about, but I didn't know (1) that it involved coordinated tortilla throwing and (2) that this tortilla throwing survived ISW and became a Thing unto itself. I'm still not sure how the mechanics of this work. Do you just carry tortillas around and hope for an opportune moment to throw them? Is it a coordinated thing, or are there Lone Ranger Tortilla Throwers?

ANYWAY. The party then progressed to Civic Center Plaza, which had become fairly crowded.

There, Mayor Ed Lee and Giants exec Larry Baer proceeded to suck the life out of the crowd with a couple of long boring speeches. Larry did the whole Growing-Up-On-29th-Avenue-in-The-Richmond thing which is great and all but nobody really gives a fuck. People at these things want to cheer for the players, not hear the executives' life stories. No towheaded 10-year-old with a Lincecum jersey and eye black on says "GEE DAD I HOPE WE GET TO HEAR THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER!!!!" No. They want to hear the players yell shit like "THANK YOU SAN FRANCISCO." Which they did.

(Also, I don't want to get morbid or anything, but Gavin Newsom's daughter looks EXACTLY like Jon-Benet Ramsey.)

So there you have it. When they win again next year, I wonder if the same number of people will show up. Yesterday, there were people who got to Civic Center Plaza at fucking 1 a.m. Wednesday morning. I can't imagine.

So congrats, Giants, on a great year and a truly unbelievable playoff run. Honestly? I still can't believe they actually came back from 0-2 against Cincinnati. Everything since that has felt kind of unreal.

About Me

TK lives and works in San Francisco. He occasionally travels to places east of the Caldecott Tunnel, but not very often. His interests include bars, reality TV, and irony. Things seem to be going fine.